


Two AM Tea Time

by EdgarAllenPoet



Series: Lucretia's Volumes [My Balance Fics] [20]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coping, Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Maureen Miller's Death, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21777292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: "I'm trying to see how many cups of coffee it takes to feel happy. So far it's not twelve."
Relationships: The Director | Lucretia & Lucas Miller
Series: Lucretia's Volumes [My Balance Fics] [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556773
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Two AM Tea Time

**Author's Note:**

> I watched a lot of awkwardemons Lucas Miller tiktoks and he gave me some feelings, okay?

When Lucretia met Lucas, he was thirteen years old. He'd been about fifty-six inches of piss and vinegar, glaring at her suspiciously behind coke bottle glasses and rolling his eyes as his mother chided him for his lack of manners. He'd eventually shaken her hand, though he made it as obvious as he could that it wasn't his idea to do so, head tilted and eyes rolled to the ceiling, hand limp in hers, one hip cocked out. 

He reminded her of Taako, actually, when he got into moods like that. And Lucretia understood it, partly. She too had been the only child of a single mother once upon a time, and she recognized the fierce protectiveness that came with that-- the same protectiveness Taako had for his sister and himself, that he wielded at strangers whenever it seemed necessary.

Lucas had run off pretty quickly after introductions, going off somewhere to entertain himself while the grown-ups spoke in hushed tones over blueprints and chalkboards. Maureen had been a pivotal part of Lucretia's entire plan, had been the labor behind the love. While Lucretia had never been a scientist herself, a century was more than enough time to learn, and considering they wanted to preserve everything they could of their homeworld she'd spent many, many hours taking studious notes on engineering, biology, anatomy, bond forces, the physics and the metaphysics behind the magic that kept them alive.

But it still helped to have a professional engineer who made her living building robots. Lucretia could out of necessity, but Maureen did it for fun. Instead of swearing and sweating over her screwdriver, she'd grin to herself and eye the robot with determination, taking the tools from Lucretia's hands and shooing her away to settle down into her work for hours. Maureen built the way Lucretia wrote.

Lucas, magnificently, had a knack for both.

As he grew older, graduated from schools and universities, and outgrew his mother's guiding hand, the two became partners. The mother and son duo invented and studied and built, and Lucas formed it all into impeccable grant proposals and studies to get their research out into the world. That was, some of it. Not all of the research they conducted was meant to be shared, not yet, not until they had more answers and Lucretia had her family back and they had everything figured out.

Lucretia still didn't deal much with Lucas, though not for a lack of trying. Lucretia couldn't blame him. Teenagers were fickle creatures, and four years wasn't any time at all. She couldn't expect him to be used to her yet. At least, that's what she thought. 

Which was why, it came as quite a surprise one night when Lucretia's time alone in the kitchen after midnight was interrupted by the room flooding with light. Lucas stood in the doorway while Lucretia made quick work of drying her eyes and sitting up straighter, wrapping both hands around the lukewarm mug she'd been meaning to sip at for hours. Lucas stood there in the doorway, too-big flannel pajama pants hanging off of him like a scarecrow. His hoodie was well worn and faded blue, with a stain over the emblem of a school either himself or his mother attended. Lucretia couldn't quite remember, and the thing was old enough that it was hard to make out. 

"What are you doing here?" Lucas asked her, and she lifted her mug to take a sip. Cold, long cold. Damn. She considered how to answer-- Lucas was grown, barely. Seventeen years old, just a boy, he hadn't even filled out his shoulders yet. And certainly, he was brilliant, but academic prowess didn't equate emotional maturity in the slightest. God knows Barry Bluejeans had been a testament to that, back in the day. 

That, and he was Maureen's son. There is no circumstance in which it is appropriate to tell your troubles to your not-quite-lover's son in the kitchen of a home in which you are a guest, especially not when your troubles involved a century's journey, an unstoppable force of destruction, and an act of incredible betrayal. 

All of this, her whole plan, was falling apart. Barry had turned up, again. If Lucretia didn't keep a closer eye on him, he'd tear her entire operation to the ground. He was more than capable. Terribly brilliant. Why did he have to be so brilliant? Why couldn't he have been placed so easily in limbo like the rest of them? 

Though it wasn't an easy limbo, it seemed, if the news was to be believed. Magnus was fighting his way through a revolution, and if that boy got himself murdered before Lucretia could save them all, she'd get Barry to bring him back just to strangle him. 

Barry, poor brilliant Barry, was going to ruin the entire thing. Her only saving grace was that he didn't have either of the twins with him (or, gods forbid, both). That would be an unstoppable team. She wasn't grateful to have lost Lup, and she still had hopes of finding her, but it was a relief to not have her trying to solve Lucretia's mysteries. 

And, at least Taako was safe. Poor, poor Taako was having the time of his life, had made a whole life for himself, was successful, was thriving in the environment Lucretia had made for him. Thank gods for small miracles. 

Lucretia thought briefly of Davenport, asleep curled up on the armchair in the next room. She held back the nausea that churned in her.

You see, none of that was something she could explain to the boy standing before her, barefoot in pajamas and bedhead at just past two in the morning. 

Instead, she leveled her own question. She asked, "Couldn't sleep?"

"Haven't tried." He shrugged a shoulder as he said it, eying Lucretia carefully like he expected her to chastise him for it. As much as she'd like to, she carefully kept her words to herself. It wouldn't do any good, not when he was expecting her to, not when he wanted another reason to resent her. 

"Me neither," she said, and he looked surprised. She sipped her tea, and Lucas watched her. He crept into the kitchen then, going to the stove and flipping a switch on the wall that would automatically start the kettle. 

"Fresh cup?" he asked, and she nodded. 

"Please." 

They watched the water boil in silence. Lucretia dumped her cold tea into the sink and placed the mug on the counter, and when the water was finished Lucas adjusted the mugs and pressed another button, lowering two nozzles that poured the water for them. He dropped in two bags, added an unfortunate amount of sugar to his own, and carried them back to the table. 

Much to Lucretia's surprise, he sat down across from her. She nodded her thanks, curled her hands around the warm mug, and breathed in the steam.

"Can I ask you something?" Lucas asked, after sipping his tea, burning his tongue, and immediately attempting a second sip. He pushed it away from him after the second burning, glaring scornfully at it. He folded his hands on the table. His knee drummed underneath, shaking the table just slightly. 

"Shoot." 

She immediately began fretting about her answers, about how to be truthful without giving anything away, or how to be empathetic without crossing a boundary, or if she ought to be either of those things at all. Gods know there were a million questions he could ask her. 

Thankfully, he chose an easy one. 

"Are you sure you'll be able to get away with it?" Lucas asked. "The second moon, and all that. I made some notes on the pods, by the way. Don't want that all crashing and burning, and I know it's still prototypes, but, y'know. Anyways, how are you going to hide a whole other moon?" 

"I have methods," she replied, sipping her tea, burning her tongue, pretending she hadn't. 

"The fish?" 

She nodded. "The fish." 

"Hell of a creature." Maureen wasn't keen on swearing, but Lucas had been going through a rebellious phase of sorts, saying as much as he could get away with these days. "How does it work?" 

"If I knew, I'd tell you." That was a lie. The voidfish was too precious of a secret to go revealing, and Lucretia wasn't sure she even had the capacity to truly understand how it did what it did. God knows Barry tried, back in the day, doing as much research with that thing as Magnus would allow. Lucretia swallowed the lump in her throat. 

Lucas nodded like he believed her. 

"One more question," he said, holding a finger up to indicate. She nodded. "Mom said not to ask you about it, but it's been a while, and um. Well, she'd not awake." His grin was guilty and boyish, like Magnus and Taako explaining how it had been a good idea to steal something absolutely unnecessary from planetside to the incandescent Davenport standing before them. 

"Go ahead," she allowed, with a pretty good idea of where this was going.

He picked at a hangnail and pulled his tea closer to him, mug scraping against the table. He said, "You used to be younger, a few years ago. But I come back from a semester and you're, well, you're old now, aren't you?" 

"I am," she nodded. "It's been about a year now." 

Happy anniversary, she thought sardonically to herself. Lucas's lip quirked up as if he'd read her mind. 

"How'd it happen?" he asked her, and she carefully considered her answer. He was, after all, a rather curious young man. 

After a few moments of thought, she settled on this: "Liches are capable of very powerful magic. My condition is irreversible, and honestly the result of my own pride. If you encounter a liche, you need to be wise enough to run from it. Do not speak to it. Do not confront it. Never listen to what it has to say."

She thought of Barry, out there somewhere, destroying everything. Thought of Wonderland. Thought of Cam. She'd barely made it to Maureen's after that, bloodied and half-blind, two-decades older and absolutely devastated. She'd cried into Maureen's lap for hours and hours, mourning her family and her plans and her failure.

Lucretia made herself stop thinking. 

"Right," Lucas said, looking pensive. "Didn't think there were many liches around. My professor was quite clear about how quickly they end up destroying themselves." 

Lucretia hummed in agreement. She sipped her tea. "Then you can imagine the strength of the ones who survive." 

It was terrifying. Lich-dom was so risky and so rarely successful. When Barry and Lup finally spilled the news-- after Barry had beefed it in an accident and immediately risen as a specter from his own corpse, the dressing-down Davenport gave their resident liches was something for the history books. Lucretia had, in fact, documented it. It was rare to see Lup ever look truly penitent like that. 

"You should try and get some sleep," Lucas decided, rising from the table and taking his tea with him. The mug wouldn't return from his room for months, of this she was certain. 

She stood as well, figuring she might as well lay and rest even if she wasn't meant to get any sleep that night. She thought of Merle's "At Least Try" sleep policy back on the Starblaster, where it was mandated that if nothing else, you at least laid down with your eyes closed for thirty minutes a day, even if you didn't feel like sleeping. 

"You as well," she said, and he grinned and retreated. 

This was not the only conversation Lucretia and Lucas would have, but as the moon base began to really develop, and Lucas continued his education off-base, their contact with each other became less and less. Time passed, and Maureen went from a good friend to a trusted advisor. Lucretia transformed from herself into Madam Director-- she knew the psychology behind adopting titles and personas to boost confidence, to foster success. Lucas would grow more and more as the years passed, from a gangly teen to a (honestly, still rather gangly) young man. He wouldn't fill out his shoulders much, but he would adopt an air of confidence, of competence, and especially of cockiness.

Was he brilliant? Yes. But, as young men tended to be, he really was just a bit much sometimes. 

Still, Lucretia had seen the latter half of his childhood, and he was Maureen's boy. Since she was invited to the moon base, full access, of course he was welcomed as well. She often found him lurking about the library, or taking notes on Fisher, much to Johann's disdain. Johann complained frequently about his company, and Carrie warned her in hushed tones that maybe having someone around who wasn't part of the fold was a rather dangerous risk to take. 

Lucretia took that advice with a grain of salt and politely didn't point out that she'd known the Millers for far longer than she'd known anyone of the B.O.B., but even that paled in comparison to how long she'd once known others, and how every relationship beyond those six felt abysmally small. 

Lucretia didn't say any of that.

She wasn't surprised by a signature knock (three quick raps) on her office door one night around two a.m. She glanced up from the page she'd been writing on, pushed her reading glasses down her nose to look over them, and also wasn't surprised when Lucas entered without any verbal permission to. 

He walked through the door, steps quick and straight-legged, always so anxious. He closed the door behind him and paused in front of it, idling quietly, chewing on his lip. 

He was twenty-three now, full-grown technically but really just a baby. Lucretia had been nearly that age for a lifetime, and it truly put things into perspective. He'd started growing some gods-awful scruff on his face, but it was better than the mustache he'd insisted on growing when he was fifteen. His hair was too long-- Maureen would want him to cut it, or if nothing else, pin it back out of his face. His clothes were quite obviously unwashed. There was... something on the skin of his arms, his hands, his face outlining the goggles he wore in the lab. Soot from an explosion perhaps, or some other similar residue.

Besides the soot, there were bags under his eyes as well, puffy and red like he'd been crying, dark and shadowy like he hadn't been sleeping. 

Lucretia rose, setting her glasses aside and flicking her wrist to start the kettle across the room. "Tea?" she offered him, and Lucas swallowed down a shudder. 

"My mother is dead," he replied and then crumpled. He staggered further into the room and collapsed bonelessly into a chair, dropping his head into his hands and pressing his palms tight to his eyes. His shoulders shook with each deep, wheezy breath he took in. 

Lucretia watched him for just a moment, and the water began to boil. She nodded, to herself. "Tea," she answered.

He didn't touch the mug she sat next to him, even though it had an ungodly amount of sugar, just the way he used to like it. She sat in the chair next to him, not behind her desk but across from it. She set down her own cup and hesitantly reached for his shoulder. 

"How did it happen?" she asked, and he told her. He sputtered out a story about an accident, machine work could be precarious at times. There was an accident, something fell, and she was crushed. By the time he got her out, she was gone, just gone. 

Something about his story rubbed her the wrong way, sat uncomfortably under her skin, but she hadn't witnessed the actual truth to know the difference. That, and he was obviously distraught. It would require a special kind of coldness to call someone a liar while they sobbed in your office about their dead mother.

It had happened that afternoon. It was still fresh, and while this wouldn't be the worst of the pain that came with mourning, it was probably the most blinding.

She let him cry in her office, sipping her tea and pushing away the lowly throbbing sadness that welled in her. It had been so long since she'd dealt with death, yet she'd had so much practice with it. What had once knocked the wind out of her and left her a sobbing, shuddering mess eventually just stunned her momentarily, saddened her slightly, before she picked herself up and went back about her day.

She'd been sad when she'd left Cam, disappointed in herself, overwhelmed with guilt, but a tickling in the back of her mind insisted that he'd be back. She hadn't felt distraught the way she ought to. 

When Lup had gone missing, it had broken them all a little bit. They were so used to death meaning nothing, that none of them could really comprehend that she wasn't coming back unless they found her. Barry and Taako, maybe, but she knew that all of them were chewing on that same dull numbness, the "it doesn't matter, it doesn't last." 

Lucas didn't have that numb. Lucas hadn't dealt with this before. Lucas hadn't had anyone in this world beyond his mother. 

"You're going to be okay," she told the sobbing boy before her, and he shrugged her hand off of his shoulder.

As Lucretia sipped on her tea and waited him out, she noticed the grinding of his jaw, the clenching and unclenching of his fist, until suddenly he was leaping up out of his chair and shouting, yelling, "How are you this calm!? How are you okay with all of this!?" 

Lucretia almost said, "Because she's coming back," but she caught the words on her tongue. Maureen wasn't coming back. This was it. She was gone. 

A pang of sadness struck in her chest, but it faded quickly, it wasn't enough. 

She found enough sense to say, "The pain isn't going to last forever. It'll get easier." 

"And how do you know that!?" he roared, sitting up in his chair and doing everything except standing, balling his fists and shoving them down, twisting to face her and snarl. His lip was bleeding, his nose was running, there were tear tracks marking through the soot on his face. 

She said, as calmly as she could manage, "I've lost people before. Family. It's terrible, but you learn to grow past it." 

Lucas simmered on those words a bit, glaring off into the distance as he chewed them over. Lucretia sipped her tea. Eventually, he muttered, "That's bullshit," and he stood. He stormed through the office and out the door, only stopping briefly in the doorway to say, "Thanks for the tea," before disappearing into the night. 

The next time Lucretia saw him, it was weeks later in the cafeteria. Carrie had mentioned his presence earlier, after dinner, said that he seemed a little distraught and hadn't moved for hours. Lucretia had made a note to go check on him, not thinking it anything too urgent, and it had slipped her mind until she was finishing up her work for the evening. 

She glanced at her clock: 1:54 a.m. 

Surely he wasn't still there at this time of night, she thought, but then figured she ought to go double-check anyways. 

Lucas was still there, seated at a table in the back of the cafeteria, surrounded by piles of texts and opened notebooks. His hair was rucked up from running his fingers through it, glasses smudged, ink smeared on his cheek. He didn't look up as Lucretia approached, not until she was close enough to see what he was writing. 

Every line he'd written had been crossed out afterward. The tip of his pen was resting on the page, painting it a dark pool of ink while he stared off into space.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asked him, and his head jerked up. His eyes were heavily shadowed and bloodshot. Lucretia counted the coffee cups on the table. He really was making quite a mess here. "What... what are you doing?" she asked. 

Lucas smiled and it didn't reach his eyes. His face seemed loose, sallow, not his own. 

"I'm trying to see how many cups of coffee it takes to feel happy," he reported, picking one up and dangling it between his fingers at her. He seemed a little unhinged. He rarely acted so loosely. "So far it's not twelve." 

"Jesus fantasy Christ..." Lucretia muttered, and she reached around the table and started tidying up the books occupying it. "It's time for bed," she told him, making stacks. "Grab your things." 

"I can't sleep," he said, standing and swaying on his feet. She gathered the books into her arms and decided that the coffee cups were tomorrow's problem. She paid her staff very well. They could handle the small mess.

She hummed in response to him and said, "I'll help. Come along." She searched old memories for a certain recipe and found it quickly enough. Gods know it was well overused during their century, and one hundred years was plenty of time to learn to make tea. 

Lucas followed along as Lucretia made her way to her office. There were dorms nearby, so it was just a quick pit stop through there to her kitchenette. She set his books on the counter and he gathered them into his arms protectively while she made her way around, mixing tea, honey, a bit of bourban, and a bit of something else into a glass of boiling water. She let it steep. She held it gently, and then she led him out of the room.

The nearest dorm was unoccupied, for which she was grateful. She let them into it, and urged him to set his books aside and sit down on the bed before pushing the cup into his hands. 

"Drink," she told him. "All of it." 

"What is it?" he sniffed it speculatively, and she kept herself from rolling her eyes. 

"It's something an old friend used to come up with. It'll help you sleep." 

True to her word, before the last drops were finished Lucas was out cold, sagging sideways into the pillows. Lucretia caught the cup before it fell and set it aside on the bed, then sighed at the young man before her. It had been just over a month since his mother's passing, and if anything he looked worse than before.

He'd heal, she knew. He had to. You couldn't go through your life mourning death forever, you'd never get anything done. Never make it to the next cycle, and gods there was so much to see out there. You couldn't let death slow you down. 

He wasn't slowing down, at least, if the stack of books was anything to go by. It was comically tall, made him look once again like a thirteen-year-old boy coming home from the library, carrying more books than he could carry and tripping over the threshold on his way inside. Back then it had been books about ghosts and adventurers and inventors and history. She refused the temptation to peek closer at the books now. 

Whatever he was studying, it probably didn't matter. So long as it kept him busy.

She knelt on the ground instead, pealed the shoes off his feet and swung his legs up into bed. She tucked the blankets around him and plucked the glasses from his face, setting them aside on the desk with his other belongings. Poor thing. He looked younger when he slept. Just about thirteen years old.

She smoothed the hair off his forehead and turned off the light as she left, returning to her own quarters to retire for the night. 

\---

Quite a clean-up had been required after the incident at Lucas's lab. Dealing with the relic, with the boys and all their shenanigans, with the knowledge that the Grim Reaper was catching wise to their situation and was apparently going to be a Problem. 

There was a lot to deal with. She didn't get to Lucas right away, but that was fine. Let him sit on it for a while, she figured. Let him get nervous. 

When things were finally settled down enough that they could have the necessary conversation, it was well after midnight. Lucretia was tired. She was surprised Lucas had actually stuck around this long, impudent little thing that he was.

But there he was, waiting to be called into her office like a child outside the principal's office. She beckoned him in, and he dragged as he approached, apparently also feeling the exhaustion. 

He was a mess. His blonde hair was messy, greasy, and his clothes looked like he'd run them through a wood chipper. He was sweaty, disgusting, and he frankly looked scared out of his mind. 

Good. 

There was a bandage wrapped around his head that he had well past bled through, and she was a bit worried about that. His lip was bleeding, split and swollen, a dried trail of blood decorating his chin. 

"Close the door," she said after he walked in. If five different members of her staff hadn't threatened to kick his ass (and gotten pretty damn close to it), she would have done it herself. Still, there were words to be said. 

Lucas hung his head as he pressed the door closed, then glanced up at her through a curtain of dirty bangs. "Care for tea?" he asked, trying to smile. Like the twins buttering up Davenport with his favorite treats before delivering bad news. Like Barry after being caught asleep at his desk in the lab by Lup. Like Merle apologizing after that time with the corn stalks.

This wasn't the same. Lucas wasn't family, he was just... almost.

Still, Lucretia was a leader now. So she straightened her shoulders and did her best to ascertain that she meant absolute serious business, but if she was being honest with herself, his comment came pretty close to making her smile.

**Author's Note:**

> every time a comment comes in through my email, i hold my phone to my chest and just cradle it for a while, so so happy that people are talking to me. make your local fanfic boy happy, shoot them a comment?


End file.
